271.) but contents himself with partridges and grouse.
Close-viewed, their industry and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating sumptuously.

As for their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus.

Nevertheless, one has still partly a feeling with the lady Marechale: "Depend upon it, Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality." (Dulaure, vii.

261.) These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or they could not have been there.

Nay, one virtue they are still required to have (for mortal man cannot live without a conscience): the virtue of perfect readiness to fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with the flock?
With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and ever worse.
They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn.